Mar 8, 2000

A Navy man named John Spannuth wrote last month, "I've just been selected to run in the Blue Angels Marathon. Please help set up a three-week training plan to maintain or improve my time without overtraining."

He added that his last marathon was a 3:13 in December, he had eased down to 20-mile weeks since then and had run a 1:32 half within the past week.

I told him that he was already in the taper period for the end-of-February marathon. Anything hard that he did from now on wouldn't help, and could hurt. Main advice: "Don't try to squeeze in a long run this weekend or next."

He would run this marathon on "memory," and his recent experiences should have been good enough to see him through. He was little more than two months past his last marathon -- and seemed to have spent most of that time recovering, which is good. And the recent half-marathon spoke well of his current fitness.

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